Thursday, October 16

Hello, Hello! We’re Derek and Lauren from the Curiosity Shoppe here in San Francisco. (You may also know us from our DIY Wednesday posts over at design*sponge.) We were so excited when Victoria invited us to guest blog while she is off on her adventures in Thailand, but we had to wonder if there was a single place in San Francisco that she hasn’t already written about! Fortunately for us, some of our favorite places to hang out are a little off the beaten path. It’s not unusual for us to spend entire mornings in our local hardware or office supply store looking for ingredients for our next DIY project. We get such a thrill coming up with new uses for the objects we find in our daily wanderings around town, we thought it would be fun to share a recent field trip with you.

This week we stopped in at an amazing restaurant supply store here in SF called Economy Restaurant Fixtures, located in Potrero Hill. You wouldn’t believe how exciting it is for us to browse shelf after shelf of cafeteria trays, diner coffee mugs and rolling pins! The possibilities are endless!

We ended up walking out with an olive green apron, 3 mini tart tins, a light blue diner tray, and 3 metal display holders in various heights. Hmmmm…. What to do with all these goodies??

The apron immediately got decorated with a sew-on patch and will be used by Derek in the kitchen.

The mini tart tins were the perfect size to hold tea lights, and they reflect the light of the candles so beautifully. (Check out our Halloween display with the bats we got from Owly Shadow Puppets at Renegade Chicago!)

The diner tray is being used to display a little menagerie of items on our dresser.

The display card holders were spray painted in three different colors and can be used to hold recipe cards or photos.

Thanks so much for reading! We’d love to hear where you find unexpected inspiration! See you next Thursday!

I used to work at BigTray (Economy's dot com site) and yes there is so much cool stuff both at the shop and online. Check out the fiesta ware! And the dough dockers look cool, and scary enough for a halloween accessory. So nice to see my old employer on one of my favorite blogs!